Publications

Tax competition.

This is the transcript of a speech given by IPI president Tom Giovanetti on Intellectual Property (IP) at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC Friday, February 10, 2006.

Mayors across the United States are all a twitter about proposals for franchise reform currently before the United States House and Senate.

Ever say something you wish you hadn’t? Or did you ever say something you shouldn’t have, but were too proud—or too uninformed—to admit you were wrong? We will let you decide which option most applies to the following quotes about President Bush’s tax cut efforts: It “threatens our prosperity and could return us to the big budget deficits of the 1980s.

In 2004 Congress passed and President Bush signed into law a three-year extension of the Internet Tax Moratorium, which has been in effect almost continually since 1998. Americans thus don’t have to worry about paying extra taxes for their access to the Internet, over and above what they already pay on telecom services. Or do they?

In October the so-called Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SST) came into effect for 19 states that have agreed to coordinate and harmonize their sales tax definitions, audit, reporting, and compliance procedures. In its present form the SST is strictly voluntary for businesses that choose to register under it and remit sales and use taxes under its framework. The chief objective of that framework is to induce or coerce companies to remit to the states taxes on mail-order and Internet sales that presently escape liability under the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Commerce Clause and Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

In fact, those constitutional constraints on states seeking to collect taxes on out-of-state sales make the SST at present voluntary, not compulsory. The SST is manifestly designed to be compulsory, however, and will become so if legislation proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan (S. 2153) and Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (S.2152) is enacted into law.

It’s a European habit, to talk a lot and do little.

It’s time for some serious tax cutting — at the state level.

On Jan.

It’s begun — the 3-month countdown to income tax filing day.